See Also

To find out how well dried shiitake mushrooms stand in for porcini, we used each type of mushroom in a vegetable soup that calls for 1/8 ounce of dried mushrooms and a mushroom sauce that uses 1/2 ounce of dried mushrooms. The results? The soup made with shiitakes was deemed meatier, with less pronounced mushroomy flavor, than its porcini counterpart—a plus for a majority of our tasters. The shiitake sauce, on the other hand, lost out to the porcini version for its relatively mild mushroom flavor.

In the future, we’ll consider substituting shiitakes for porcini mushrooms in dishes in which we value meaty, umami-boosting qualities, and we’ll save pricier dried porcini (they often cost twice as much as shiitakes) for times when we really want to feature their distinctive mushroom taste.

Richly flavored vegetable soup is no problem when you’ve fussed over homemade stock. For a weeknight version, we needed to get creative with&nbsp;pantry staples.

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